Urban Growth Patterns and Forest Carbon Dynamics in the Metropolitan Twin Cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript entitled “Urban Growth patterns and forest carbon dynamics in the Metropolitan Twin Cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Pakistan” compares LULCC between 1990 and 2020 for both areas. The authors classified Landsat images and calculated carbon dynamics and NDVI for both periods. Firstly, the manuscript requires an English Grammar Review. Also, the Figures and Maps must be improved.

Secondly, it is not clear why both urban areas were selected. The studied areas section is poorly written. The authors must clarify the importance of both areas. As I do not know the region, the Parks should be described here. Also, how were the samples of the Carbon Dynamics sub-topic selected?  One interesting result that the authors should present is what LU converted between 1990 and 2020. Even knowing what is reducing or increasing, we could see in which is changing between years.

Finally, my primary concern is about the discussion section. This section must have an improvement. The authors do not discuss the results properly, presenting the same information from Results and showing some policies that should be introduced. Discussion about the increase of NDVI and the accelerated urban growth in Islamabad were not done. Improving these topics, the Conclusion, and Final Remarks should be improved.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Kindly find attached herewith point by point response of you comments. We affirm that all the points raised by you has been corrected.

Regards

Dr. Abdul Mannan

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Abstract - You have used two different units Mg for per hectare estimate and Gg for the total carbon estimate. Can you use one common unit/scale?

Introduction  - Line 49 - "Urban development preferences vary across the different for instance, across the 49 United States of America, local populations prefer single villa residences unlike the Japanese who prefer high-rise buildings with accessible public transportation" - Do you mean among the different the countries?

Line 52 - "According to [8] and [9,10]" - mention the names of the authors instead of numbers. For example, you could say Smith[8], and Vellend et al. [9,10]. Also, line 55 - please use the names of the authors directly when you are mentioning their work.

Line 52 - "due to urban 52 sprawl," - Due to urban growth or expansion? I do not think Sprawl is the right word here.

Line 63-64 - "These green areas thus harbour conservation profiles as natural ecosystems which influences the survival of species, biodiversity richness and carbon sequestration [9,17,18], " Please rewrite this sentence.

Line 56-58 - "Rapid haphazard urbanization is a big problem in developing countries [12], as Powered by biogeophysical microclimatic processes that drive 57 temperature, surface albedo and evapotranspiration rates, green areas also enhance and 58 conserve biodiversity [13]. " This sentence did not make sense to me. Haphazard? Do you mean unplanned or random? What do you mean by a big problem, why is it a big problem, a big problem for whom? What is the nature of this big problem, what does it do?

What do you mean by powered by biogeophysical processes? What do mean by biophysical processes powering urbanization? 

Minor: Please do a thorough the article and proofread each and every sentence to identify and correct grammatical mistakes. I have found mistakes in almost every two lines.

Major: Please provide more background on forest/green cover change in Pakistan and your study area and how it affects ecology and carbon sequestration. You have only mentioned the ecological implications in one small sentence. Can you elaborate on what shifts in urban forest cover dynamics would impact urban ecology and biodiversity?

Time series data- you mention time series but you have really only used the difference between two years to compare the change 2020 and 1990. Also, you mentioned only one month - February. Thus, this is not time-series data.

LULCC maps and analysis - Did you do any ground-truthing of your analysis/model outputs? If yes, please mention it. If not, then the maps may not be trusted.

Line 215 in methods your estimate of carbon in the lower and dry matter has huge variation indicated by 2.1 mean Mg/ha and 14.3 as standard deviation or error. I that is the case, then the estimates of lower storey do not provide any reliable information.

I suggest you do some quantitative stats (e..g linear models) to model the relationship between year and change in the built-up area, carbon or vegetation. In the manuscript, you have only provided information/estimates based on average values which do not provide a robust estimate of changes in the landscape.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Kindly find attached herewith point by point response of you comments. We affirm that all the points raised by you has been corrected.

Regards

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors had improved the manuscript with the last review.

Author Response

We are very grateful to our reviewers for investing their time in reviewing our paper. Their comments and suggestions were very valuable. Addressing those comments has improved the quality and presentation of our manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

The article can be published after checking for grammatical mistakes. 

Author Response

we thoroughly proofread our papers to locate and fix ant grammar or spelling mistakes. Moreover, to increase the readability and language expression of our manuscript we proofread our paper by two native speakers (Foreign PhD scholars in our school). We hope the overall compaction of language expression has been improved a lot to meet the reviewer level and journal standard.